Many COVID testing sites ARE now requiring a doctor's referral. Not all are, however. For example, at least locally, Quest Diagnostics (working with Wal Mart Pharmacies) does not require a MD's referral. One can go online and get signed up for an appt. without a referral. That said, the whole process is a royal PITA, and takes significant time and persistence. Plus it involves self-testing -- a very good way to get lots of false negatives. I can very easily see how the whole mess could reduce positive case reports by a factor of 4 compared to last year's "easy and convenient" testing." That really artificially drives up our CFR.
OTOH, serious case numbers and Covid fatalities are likely at least somewhere "in the ballpark" -- at least if one gives the data several weeks to settle out.
The UK however, is showing high and probably a lot more accurate case numbers than we are, but, their fatalities are comparatively quite low vs. either their previous wave or their current case numbers. It is an excellent demonstration that the vaccines are doing what their manufacturers claimed: Reduce the CHR and CFR.
BTW, regarding Russia and Ukraine, check out Romania, too. They are getting walloped.
Yeah, understood. I’m not really thinking in terms of how difficult it is to get tested. Rather, the vaxed think they are bulletproof and won’t bother unless they are really sick. They choose not to, regardless of how easy.
England has a super duper variant and that’s the cause of their case ramp. Again, same concept there, too. They are mostly vaxed. Those cases are all someone so desperate with symptoms that he had reason get tested. It is those people that are generating the big rise.
Russia and Ukraine are substantially vax reluctant and that’s a factor, but Romania is well vaxed and also seeing big numbers. The new variants are infecting the vaxed as readily as — well don’t want to go overboard. They are infecting the vaxed easily, maybe not as easily as unvaxed, but easily. England population vaxed early so their vax duration is later than the US. It is fading.
Another point as regards vax effectiveness. I was somewhat surprised by the US death curve in the Feb/March time frame. More and more people were getting vaxed, but the slope of death decline did not steepen. In fact, if flattened. I thought this was astonishing, given vax performance quotes.
Now, as the current peak declines, the slow is less steep than Feb/March. With such a high vax population, this is nearly impossible . . . but again don’t want to go overboard. It’s not impossible, because it’s not the same virus.